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Archives for July 2015

As much as I have been grooving on painting flowers lately, there is something really satisfying about a totally random abstract. No meaning or purpose – just color, color, COLOR. Michael’s asked me to show a new way to use one of their favorite brands – Liquitex paints. Lucky for me, they are one of my favorites too! And since this is the height of summer, I thought this would be a great chance to cool off with an old favorite: ice painting.

I know what you are thinking; Ice painting? Paint ice? What the?

Yep. Ice painting.

Ice made from paint. You just leave it to melt on the paper and it’ll make these colored puddles like WHOA. I learned to do this in nursery school (shout out to Palisades Pre K!) where we made paint puddles then when they dried we drew faces and legs on top. It was precious. I don’t recall what I made, but I recall it was really messy and that meant I liked it. That’s pretty much the criteria for a good craft – messy meter reading of 8 or more. This won’t be that messy for adults, or, play it safe and keep it outside. Your call. It can be an easy or sophisticated as you like it.

Materials
Liquitex acrylic paint
Watercolor paper
Water
Ice cube tray (you could also use baggies or disposable trays (any sort of plastic ‘bubble’ packaging will work fine too))
Toothpick or plastic fork (for stirring)
Paintbrush
Old towel (or work outside on the grass)

Note on paint: Ice painting can be done with lots of different kinds of paint, but I have found that using a full bodied acrylic like Liquitex will give you the most interesting and saturated results. You’ll want a paint with a lot of pigment. It needs to be water soluble to lend itself to ice, but thick enough to that some of it will resist melting into the ice completely (you’ll see the difference when it melts). I’m very fond of Liquitex because that was what was recommended as the standard in art school, and although they carry several varieties, I like the big tubes you can get at Michaels. They last for years. Literally, I just finished off a tube of white Liquitex from 1999. It’s a workhorse!

So, let’s start. Add a small amount of paint in each compartment of the ice tray (somewhere between 1/2 a teaspoon and a full teaspoon). You can get 2 ice cube trays at any dollar store, or you can line an existing tray with tin foil or plastic wrap.

Add a small amount of water. Maybe a teaspoon. DO NOT FILL (YET). You need enough room for the next step.

Use a stick or spoon to mix the paint with the water. Plan on it splashing around. Don’t worry about it blending completely (in fact you will get more interesting end results if you leave a few paint chunks)…just get the party started.

Now go back and add enough water to fill each compartment. Remember, water expands when it freezes so leave a little room on top.

Put it in your freezer and let it solidify. Most ice will freeze up in a a couple of hours, but I just let it set all night.

Now for the fun! When the ice is solid, plop it out onto a piece of watercolor paper. I like to crush a few of the cubes and let them run around the paper a little. You can actually paint like this, using the cube as a sort of brush, but I like the results that come from letting the ice do its thing.

Note, you really need an absorbent paper like watercolor paper for this. You could also use white fabric, or a cotton rag paper, but regular copy paper will just shred – get something absorbent.

What you see above is what it looked like after about 5 minutes on the paper. The melting has already begun. You can see the colors starting to spread and mingle. Also, note the colors spreading off the edge and the old towel underneath. This is not a project you get to control, so just get ready for spillage.

This is what it looked like after 30 minutes. Still a few large cubes, but all the small ice crumbles have melted and mingled. This is one of the reasons I recommend using ice cubes in a similar color way for each piece of paper. If you do the whole rainbow on a single sheet they’ll melt into brown early on. Then again, maybe you want brown. I can dig that too.

This is how it looked the next morning. I’m telling you, it has a mind of its own. The key here is DO NOT MOVE THE PAPER. Keep it on a flat surface and leave it alone. The paper will gradually start to warp and create peaks and valleys and that will distribute the color while creating the coolest patterns and stain ruffles.

Yes I said stain ruffles. That’s a real term. Those ruffles of color stains are what happens when you use a good, full bodied paint. See how the yellow runs from a deep sunset orange to a pale butter yellow wash? Yep. And it’s all from a single ice cube, crushed up and allowed to melt at different rates. It’s magic!

Now, here is the optional part: go back in and fill the white spaces with another paint color. It looks cool with a white background, but I like to pull out the color wheel and pick something to balance off the values I already have working here. Hey now, how about a crash course in color theory?

I don’t usually reference the color wheel, except when choosing final ‘accent’ colors, in which case I won’t finish a piece without it. I use it for painting, graphic design…even putting pillows on the couch or hanging art on a wall. You can make this really complicated but I like the triangle method, aka: three point color harmony.

Here goes: Identify the two most dominant color zones you have going on already, note their spot on the wheel, then use those two points to identify the opposite third point of the triangle. Sometimes it’s an equilateral triangle, sometimes it’s an isosceles triangle (<<brownie points to me for knowing how to spell isosceles)…but no matter what, the third point is always the opposite middle between the other two color zones. For some reason, adding a dash of calculated color always works out way better than anything I pick in my head. I don’t know why, but it does. I don’t fight it any more.

Now, just pop it in a frame and call it a day! Good news: You can also get the frame at Michaels. More good news: Michael’s is having their Big Brand sale next week so you can get major discounts on Liquitex paint for the next two weeks. The colors are intermixable so you can use them for all kinds of stuff. Check out all of the Liquitex products in store or on Michaels.com and check out the Big Brand Sale page for more details.

One of the things I love most about having a blog is getting recommendations from you guys – books, movies, restaurants…you name it. Y’all have great taste. And word of mouth is a powerful force! And since I forgot to do a Happy Monday post this week (see you next Monday – I promise!) I thought it might be a fun to share some other stuff I am digging right now – not on the internet, but in person. Just a handful of my summer favorites…

This thing. Let me tell you…It took me 30+ years to realize that I didn’t hate grapefruit, but it was worth the wait. And now we are besties! I love it so hard. It’s strangely refreshing and not nearly as bitter as I recalled, although I still like to mix it with something else. My favorite thing: grapefruit spritzers. How? Freeze grapefruit juice in ice cube trays then when it’s solid, put a few cubes in the bottom of a glass and fill up the rest with club soda. Add a pretty straw – it absotootly makes a difference. I sip on these spritzers morning, noon and night. It starts out as mostly soda water, but as time passes and the two blend, by the time you get to the bottom of the glass it’s like a sparkling citrus slushy. THIS is how you get through 9am in 60% humidity. Great news: it’s also a terrific base for a cocktail. Because the only thing that goes together as well as grapefruit and me is grapefruit and vodka. Not that I need it – I could get drunk off the smell alone. Last weekend at the market they were squeezing fresh grapefruit juice right next a big wall of those enormous white Casablanca lilies and the two smells together…!!!zomg!!!…whoever figures a way to put that in a bottle and sell it as perfume will make a mint. Take my money, please! TAKE IT.

This is going to be the nine hundredth time I use this blog to praise Australian television and movies, so pardon me if you have heard it before, but seriously: these people know how to do it! Wentworth is a television series based on a women’s prison, and before you say “That sounds like they ripped off Orange is the New Black!” they didn’t – they ripped off (or “reimaged”) another Australian show called Prisoner from back in the 80s (which I have not seen – but don’t worry – I will). Unlike OTNB, Wentworth does not sugarcoat prison life. You get all the unpleasantries in your face and then some. I’ll confess to covering my eyes at least once per episode. It is gritty, hilarious, and occasionally heart-breaking. It’s not a comedy but each of the characters is humorous in their own specific way. My favorite character, Jax (centered above), switches likeability gears at least twice per episode — something you would NEVER see on American television because American audiences don’t give themselves enough credit to follow along. I am telling you, these characters are complicated. Messy. Strange. Compelling. I devoured the first two seasons on Netflix this month and I’m furious that they have yet to acquire the third season that premiered down under in April. If you have seen it, don’t tell me what happens. You can tell me if it’s good, but don’t tell me. Okay? It’s been a long time since I have been this invested in television characters and I’m going to be hella pissed off if something happens to one of them!

The New Bohemians by Justina Blackney came out a few months ago and it now has a permanent spot on my shelf of favorite décor books. The title hints at ‘bohemian’ but I might call it something closer to ‘gypsy’ or ‘hippie.’ It’s like, you know how everyone knows someone with a cousin in California who joined a cult after college but then they got out of the cult but still refuse to use real coffee mugs? Yeah. It’s like that. None of these homes have Garfield coffee mugs hidden away on a top shelf or anything. There are potted plants dripping from the air ducts. Macramé toilet roll holders. Paisley print boot mats. Every object is infused with energy. Style. Wisdom. My personal style veers a little closer to traditionalist Dorothy Draper-ish formulas, but I so admire this banquet of eye candy. Splendid!

My summer soundtrack of 2015: Jack + Eliza. Childhood friends from New York, they grew up to form a band with an eerie knack for harmonies. If you know your ’60s jams you’ll hear influence from The Mamas & The Papas or perhaps The Beach Boys. There is something very baby boomer groovy about them, but also very fresh and interesting. They have that ‘millennial edge’ that you can hear from new artists but it’s hard to put your finger on it. It’s my go-to album of the season.

Also, while we are on the subject of music, my favorite summer Songza mix lists (If you don’t know Songza yet, check out my favorite apps):

A Badass Summer in the ‘90s. It’s like the Dawson’s Creek soundtrack but better. Really great 90s B tracks – everything from Better Than Ezra to The Notorious BIG.

Cottage Bound. Vintage hits and little-known favorites. Little bit of everything, but each has some serious road-music vibes.

LL Bean Summer Soundtrack. Don’t let the LL Bean label fool you – it’s not turtleneck music. It’s folk and upbeat Americana acoustic. LL Bean is known as a New England brand but this feels very Midwestern to me, which is something I love to hear in music but rarely find.

Here is a problem I share with a lot of people: my stomach doesn’t register that it has eaten a meal unless there is something hot involved, but, in the summer, I really don’t want cook hot food. It’s already hot enough inside my kitchen and I pay too damn much on air conditioning to run an oven at 450 just to make lunch. My answer to this problem: stove salad. I wrote a post about this a couple years back and I periodically get comments and emails from people who are still using it. The crux is this; I make some sort of protein and carb on Sunday (chicken and rice or pork and quinoa…you get the idea) then batch the leftovers into baggies. Next time I want a meal I can just microwave the chicken situation then toss over some cut veggies and arugula. Maybe there is a little dressing involved? Maybe not. It’s good hot or cold, but you get a reasonably nutritious and filling meal without heating up the kitchen. Plus, there is something about arugula in summer. I started liking it when someone told me that French people serve arugula in lemon and olive oil at every meal and that is why they are all so skinny and never get fat. So far this theory has not worked on me, but I am not opposed to continuing the effort. Stove salad, folks. It’s a keeper!

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So that is what I know. Do you have any summer favorites? Good books? Secret cocktails? Holler. I’m always on the lookout!

Whewwwwee! Howdy doo my friends. I am coming off a weekend of fun and sun (read: wine and chocolate) in California. More on that follow when I detox and unload the camera (read: catch up on Netflix with the cat).

In the mean time, real quick, I wanted to share this post I put together that might be the best technique idea I have had in a long time. It involves glue and the toddler-sized stack of B track paintings sitting in my closet. I think your’e going to like it.

Forgive the delay friends. It’s Tuesday and I still didn’t write a Monday post. And it’s not because I didn’t find anything good on the internet this week (DID YOU EVEN SEE MISS PIGGY ON INSTAGRAM?). This week has had some unexpected/exciting developments (more to follow) and I’m hustling to get my work done before leaving for California this week. Heyo! I’m going to the Santa Cruz area to hang out with a bunch of other seriously crafty lady folk. I plan on coming back with large quantities of wine and glue guns. Airport security is going to be really, really confused.

Thanks to great weather and my laptop, I have been spending more time outside than I can recall in a long while. I’m happiest when I can feel lazy while being productive. And my sunglasses are getting a workout. Last night I saw a man get dramatically thrown out of car by his wife (I assume) and now I’m just sitting here waiting for further drama to unfold. It’s exciting.

You know what else is exciting about chilling outside all day? You come up with weird things to do with plants.

Fern. Ferns. Ferns. I have ferns on the brain. They are my absolute favorite plant. Did you know ferns are older than dinosaurs? It’s true. Eat your heart out, Jurassic Park.

Happy Monday friends. It’s pouring rain here right now and the sky is the streaked with eight-fingers lightening bolts, which, let me tell you, is quite a way to kick off a Monday! Thanks to everyone who left kind words on my last post about my new artistic adventure – your encouragement prompted me to spend the whole weekend painting on the porch, totally ignoring anything that didn’t come in a tube labeled Winsor & Newton. I so, so needed that. Thank you! On to new adventures (and distractions) this week…

Word of the week: Altschmerz. n. “Weariness with the same old issues that you’ve always had—the same boring flaws and anxieties you’ve been gnawing on for years, which leaves them soggy and tasteless and inert, with nothing interesting left to think about, nothing left to do but spit them out and wander off to the backyard, ready to dig up some fresher pain you might have buried long ago.”

Holiday of the week: Yellow Pig Day, July 17, created by a group of Princeton mathematicians to commemorate pigs in text books, yet again proving why math people are gloriously weird.

Follow of the week: Mari Orr. Former chemist turned artist. Incredible eye for color (as evidenced by the swatch rainbow up top!) Her instagram feed is like a walk through a garden. Gorgeous!

The WWF put a go pro on a sea turtle to take us on a tour of the Great Barrier Reef. Prepare to watch it at least three times.

So there is this thing that happens to some creative-minded people. You may have heard of it; it’s called accumulation.

Now, I have made no secret of my hoarding tendencies (or where they come from) but I don’t often discuss this very real, very common problem that happens when you make stuff – a lot of stuff – and then have nothing to do with it. Nothing. And it’s awful. For this reason, most of the projects I do on this site have some practical tie in. Purpose. Function. If I want to make something purely decorative, it’s usually a seasonal item and takes little/no money to make. It’s like I need to give myself permission to make art for art’s sake, and permission is rarely granted. At least, that’s the way I have always felt...

Then, maybe six months ago (following these painted gift bags), a flip was switched and all I want to do was make stuff for the sake of making. Painting in particular. I just want to mess around with paint. All day. All night. Most winters I struggle with some not-unserious seasonal depression, and since I started painting last December, it was totally manageable – and the only think I took on was painting. I’m not dismissing all sorts of other helpful habits, but when you know something has a positive effect on your mental health, that’s a big deal. Huge. It says something to me. Paint and Me: We are supposed to be together. And because I only let myself do it when my other work is done/semi-done, I don’t feel bad about it at all. I don’t even want to post them on the blog or show them to other people. They are mine. And I love that. And I don’t feel guilty about a lick of it…Until now.

And why do I feel guilt?

Accumulation.

Currently, I’m turning out an average of 5-10 pieces a week. That doesn’t mean they are good, that just means they exist. Multiply that times 30 weeks deep in this run, I now have hundreds of these things. Most of them 80% done. And it never stops. I’m accumulating these papers and canvases at an unreasonable rate. And it’s not a cheap habit. And then they just sit there on a shelf waiting for a friend to randomly say, “We need more art in our house – do you have anything?” and then it’s weird because I can’t go into someone’s home without looking at my work. I don’t even like seeing my own work in my own house, so why would I want to see it in yours? So it stays at home, tucked in a cupboard, accumulating. I don’t feel guilty about any of it except for the accumulating part. It’s just taking up space. It has no function.

So, this begs the question: What to do with it?

In the back of my mind I think I could sell some (emphasis on *some*) of the work, but probably not for a lot of money for a lot of hassle, and I’ll admit upfront, rejection is a big deal. I would be absolutely heartbroken if I put all my stuff and it didn’t sell. Years of blogging has thickened my skin to general criticism and rejection, but knowing that nobody wants this thing that is important to you? Yeah. That’s not easy. It never will be.

Last week I was at an art show – one of those tent style street fairs where people weave in and out. I was wandering around and admittedly, I was thinking, Okay, maybe I could do this. Maybe I could do this. Maybe I could seek some stuff. Maybe I could do this! And then I wandered into a booth and these two women were talking about how ugly/unattractive this one artist’s work was. And while I wasn’t crazy about his work either, I was livid, absolutely livid that the artist had to stand there in his booth hearing them saying that. Here, he had laid his heart out on the table, only to have someone else trample it because it didn’t match their couch cushions or their idea of what is “good.”

The weird thing was, he seemed okay with it. He was used to it. That stuff is just the nature of the beast. You have to be willing to swallow mass rejection before you can make a sale. He knew that, and he was up for it anyway.

Back in art school we had to do daily critiques on everything, and I mean everything, and you would get really comfortable with the idea of other people not liking your work, but, it was always coming from someone who was putting themselves up for critique too, so words were measured. You watched your delivery. When strangers reject what you hold dear, it hurts in a different way. I have such admiration for people who know how to weather that sort of storm, and one day I hope to be one of them. I’m not there yet, but one day, I hope to be. If not for my own personal growth then for the sake of my closet space. There is no more room at this inn!

So, my question here is, do you use your creative abilities to make things? And if so, how do you address this issue of accumulation? Do you give your stuff away? Do you sell it – and if so, where? Or do you just keep it around for your own benefit? Or do you just not make stuff because you don’t know where to put it? I am confident I am not alone in this struggle, so I’m hoping we can identify some new ways to work around it. For real. I’m all ears!

I don’t know about you, but I am coming off a seriously lovely holiday weekend. I know it was America’s birthday party, but it felt very much like mine. There was an unapologetic sum of eating, chilling, and being generally lazy in good company. I have seen more parades, grilled meat and small dogs in costume than any one person is allowed. Yesterday was gorgeous, so we spent it up at the Chicago Botanic Garden, which is lovely any time of year, but especially when the waterlilies are in bloom and the whole place is like walking around in a giant Monet painting.

Also. This was interesting!

Well. Gosh. It swallows a beetle, then changes gender, and births up the beetle all that in one day? This makes me feel really under accomplished!

The state of Ohio’s health director, whose refusal to list a gay man as the surviving spouse on a death certificate (which led to last week’s landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling) delivered the reading at a same-sex wedding last weekend. (fyi, it was from Mark 12 “Love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these.”) (And if that isn’t full circle living, I don’t know what is.)

Holiday of the week: Different Colored Eyes Day. This holiday celebrates the diversity of eye color, as well as heterochromia – the eye condition where people have two different colors of eyes (now brown, one blue, etc). Do you know who almost has ? Jane Seymour, aka Doctor Quinn Medicine Woman. Also a lot of other celebrities, including David Bowie, but not really. Because David Bowie wasn’t cool enough already? Sigh.

Word of the week: XinTeng. The Chinese term for heartache with a particular emphasis on shared pain, or the heartache that comes from witnessing a loved one in pain. In America we just call this “feeling sorry for someone” but this is more empathetic. Why do we not have this word in English?

Today is July 1st, which marks five years since I started this blog. Five. In blog terms that means I have been around since the time of the dinosaurs. In real world terms, this is a really dedicated hobby. I started blogging for a bunch of reasons, but mostly because I was doing some web design at work and wanted a sandbox to play around in. I never dreamed that five years later this would be such a major part of my life and a driving force for my business. Part of that is my work, but mostly that is because of you guys. How do I say thank you for that?

Want to see something funny? I was hunting through my old photos from 2009, before I actually started blogging, right about when I was thinking about starting a blog, and had an idea that food blogging would become the thing (<< and I wasn’t wrong about that). Back then Pioneer Woman was the only food blogger I knew about and assumed the field was wide open. Ha! Now I laugh.

Anyway. My perception of the times told me that old fashioned Betty Crocker foods with a modern twist were popular (I think I might have been watching too much Sandra Lee). Want to see what I thought I could deliver?

1. BAM.

2. Horf!

3. BAM. We have come a long way, baby.

FYI that was my grandmother’s chicken noodle kugel, aka: Midwest in a Pot. Don’t forget the pretzels on top! Possibly the grossest, least healthy, but strangely delicious thing ever. I want you to know I have served this to people in real life who have loved it. LOVED IT. But yeah, how that translates to the internet…yeah. Nope. This wasn’t something I served more than once a year, so what made me think it would be a great way to launch a food blog, I don’t know. But you can see why that never got off the ground. Also, I thought was a really good product photo. And at the time, it probably was. I have certainly leveled up my photography game since then, but so has the blogosphere. Video is the new frontier. I suspect folks will be filming home movies in 3D before the decade is up. Hoverboards can’t be far behind…

Welp. A year post hood kugel, I started this site, AND IT GOT OFF THE GROUND. It got off the ground, spread its little wings, and carried me into a new and exciting adventure. Six years past noodle kugel, and nearly 1,000 posts later (not one of them involving an ugly casserole recipe), the adventure continues. I am so glad you are here to enjoy it with me.